


Overwhelm Them With Honesty

by PorcupineGirl



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Coming Out, M/M, Making The Best of a Bad Situation, Outing, TMZ are douches, YouTube, being forcibly outed, language that is disparaging of sex workers, these guys being dorks on camera, this didn't start out nearly as ridiculous as it wound up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcupineGirl/pseuds/PorcupineGirl
Summary: When life gives you lemons, make a video tutorial on your MooMaw's famous lemon bars.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This fic involves Jack and Bitty being outed by paparazzi. I know a lot of people don't like those kinds of stories. But at least they manage to flip everyone involved a giant bird.
> 
> Apparently my brain was so sick of everything else I've been writing that it decided to spit this thing out fully-formed yesterday. I wrote 7500 words yesterday (obviously some of that was cut), a new record. WTF, brain. It all went downhill much more quickly than I'd expected.

_In the eye of the hurricane, there is quiet._  
_For just a moment._  
_A yellow sky._

 

The only blessing is that it happens on a day off.

Maybe the people responsible thought they were doing Jack a favor, timing it for the few days between the end of the Falconers' regular season and the start of their playoff run, so he'd have a couple days for things to die down.

Or maybe they were trying to fuck with Jack's head going into the playoffs.

Either way, Jack doesn't even have practice today. Sure, he was planning on getting a workout in, but mostly hoping to rest up because if there's one thing he's learned in three seasons with the Falconers, it's that rest is a precious thing in playoff season.

He and Eric have only just gotten up. They're sitting at the kitchen island, nursing their first cups of coffee before they can have a coherent conversation. Eric, as always, is scrolling through his phone; one side effect of getting a job as social media manager for a local restaurant chain in Providence has been that, for the past six months, he's been even more glued to it than usual. Jack has his iPad out, but instead of browsing the internet he's watching tape of the Rangers; he's had trouble getting the puck past their new goalie all season, and he has four days to find a reliable weakness to exploit.

Eric makes a strange little choking sound. As Jack looks up, he spits his coffee back into his cup.

"Uh," Jack says.

Eric's gone pale, his eyes wide. Then rage replaces the horror on his face. His teeth are slightly bared as he slams his phone down on the counter.

"Bits?"

But Eric is stalking off to their bedroom. Jack is pretty sure he hasn't done anything to piss him off. He wants to look at Eric's phone, but he knows it's better to ask. If it's something personal—and it must be, to get this kind of reaction—he'd rather tell Jack in his own words.

When Jack gets to the bedroom, Eric is peering out the window. But the blinds are closed, and he's just peeking out from between two of them, which is weird. Not peeking, though—glaring, as though the window itself has wronged him. The window, or whatever he sees outside of it.

Jack joins him, looks over his shoulder through the slit.

"What happened?" he asks softly, rubbing up and down Eric's back with one hand.

"They—" Eric tries to answer, but cuts himself off. "Someone—"

Jack stays quiet, lets him answer in his own time.

But instead of answering Jack, he mutters, "It has to be one of those three buildings. Not that that helps anything."

"What—" but before Jack can get clarification, Eric has taken off, back to the kitchen.

Jack barely makes it to the bedroom door before Eric is back, phone in his hand. The hand is shaking. He takes a deep breath.

"Somebody—" He swallows, takes another breath. "Somebody took pictures. Of us. Nothing awful, but—bad enough."

Cold washes over Jack, leaving him numb as he takes the phone.

The photos are up on TMZ. Of course. Vultures. They'd spent his first few months in the NHL trying to get drug-related dirt on him, always right there every time he so much as went out for a beer with his teammates after a game. Once he'd proven himself thoroughly boring, they'd given up.

Somebody there must be cackling in delight this morning.

The photos are grainy, clearly taken from a long way away through a telephoto lens. The view is straight into their bedroom, from a tiny bit above, through the window Eric was just looking out of, and his behavior makes a lot more sense now.

There are four photos. The first is clearly just there to establish that it is, in fact, Jack's bedroom—it's just an innocuous picture of him standing at the window, talking on the phone, but he's very clearly identifiable. He's even wearing a Falcs shirt.

The next two are not quite so innocuous. They're nothing sexual, but they're of Eric giving him a back rub. They both have their shirts off, Jack lying on the bed on his stomach, Eric straddling him. Jack is pretty sure they were taken two weeks ago, when he was particularly stiff the morning after a game.

The fourth is the clincher, without which the first three would be worthless—just after the back rub, Jack has rolled over. He's propped up on one elbow, his other hand in Eric's hair as they kiss.

Luckily, that's all there is. Right after that, he'd reached over and hit the button on his phone that would close the blinds. Over a year ago, Eric had installed some kind of app that controlled all sorts of things—blinds, lights, and most importantly, allowing him to start the oven preheating before he got home. Jack was thankful for it now; if it weren't for that, he might have been too lazy to get up and close the blinds at all, and they would have gotten _far_ more incriminating photos.

Jack hands the phone back to his fiancé. He takes a few deep breaths.

Then he runs to the bathroom and throws up in the toilet. As all he's had so far that morning is coffee, it's even less pleasant than throwing up usually is.

By the time he's done, Eric's there, kneeling beside him with a glass of water. He rinses his mouth, then drinks the rest of the water.

"Sorry," he says when he can speak. "Sorry, Bits, I don't know—it's not like we weren't planning on going public soon, this is stupid, I don't know why I'm—sorry."

Eric frowns at him, but he's clearly not mad at Jack. "Don't you _dare_ apologize as if you've done a damn thing wrong here, Jack Zimmermann. Of course you're going to react like that, god, I feel sick to my stomach, too. I mean—we—look—I can't even feel _safe_ in my own _home_ , that's just _sick_. It's one thing to get a photo out in public, but this? This is just—this is disgusting. And even if— _even if_ it had been in public, if we'd slipped up and kissed when a parking garage wasn't as empty as we thought or something, even if it happened the day before we were gonna come out, it still wouldn't be okay. We had this under control, it's _our_ life, _our_ story, it is not _theirs_ to tell or to make these kinds of decisions about. They took that away from us, the power to control our own story, and that just—it's so—even without it being so nasty, it'd still make us feel powerless."

Jack can hear his own phone starting to blow up in the kitchen. He can't even imagine. Surely George is in there, along with Cassie in the Falconers' PR office. Cassie is the one who's been helping them craft what was _supposed_ to be their process of going public.

Their wedding is in late July, on the lake in Nova Scotia where his parents have a cottage. The plan is— _had been_ —to make both his sexuality and their relationship public right before they leave Providence for the last of the wedding preparations. He didn't want anything so impersonal as a press release, or as public and exposed as a press conference, so he'd been working with Cassie to choose a sports writer with a history of being respectful toward him to grant an exclusive interview to. The one lie he was going to tell was to claim their wedding would be in Montreal, a week later than the actual ceremony. By the time the media had any idea they'd actually already married in the outskirts of Halifax, they'd be on their honeymoon in Paris.

That's what was _supposed_ to happen.

Eric's right. Losing that makes Jack feel powerless.

He doesn't want to think about who else may have seen the photos and be calling or texting him by now. Probably his parents, probably some SMH friends, maybe some teammates. He can't face their—their what? Pity? Horror? Anger on his behalf? Not yet.

He wraps Eric up in his arms, buries his nose in his hair. Every muscle in Eric's body is pulled tight, but he relaxes into the touch. They both need this, for a minute. Just to hold each other and reaffirm what really matters here. It doesn't make Jack stop shaking, but it lets him shift his mind from blinding, screaming panic to empty static. Still not very productive, but less painful.

Eventually, Eric leads him into the living room, pushes him down onto the couch. Jack closes his eyes and just sits there, trying to keep breathing. He feels a mug pressed into his hand, opens his eyes to find that it's some of the gourmet loose tea Eric's taken to buying from a little shop down the street. This is some soothing herbal blend. He takes a sip and closes his eyes again.

He can hear Eric's voice behind him somewhere, maybe in the kitchen.

"… Look, there's a week's worth of Twitter posts queued up already, along with posts about this week's specials for all the restaurants' Facebook pages. Nothing's going to go up on Instagram today, but it won't fall apart if it doesn't have any posts for a couple of days. That meeting this afternoon, though, that's gonna have to be rescheduled for some day when I'm not on the front page of TMZ."

Jack squeezes his eyes shut harder and reminds himself that this is not his fault. The person who took and sold those photos, and the people who bought them and put them online, those are people with no morals who invaded _their_ privacy for a quick buck. Thinking that Eric wouldn't be in this position if he weren't dating Jack is pointless, since at this point Eric would be living a completely different life if he weren't dating Jack. One where much worse things might have happened to him, or where, even if nothing terrible had happened, he might just not be as happy. This isn't Jack's fault any more than it is Eric's.

A few minutes later Eric joins him on the couch, Jack's phone in one hand, his own in the other.

"Do you want a list of who all's called or texted so far?"

"Sure." He might not be able to handle hearing or reading their messages yet, but he thinks he can handle a list.

"Okay… phone calls from Cassie, George, your mom, your dad, _my_ mom, Shitty, Lardo, your mom again, Cassie again, Shitty again, Tater, Marty, your dad again, two numbers I don't know, and—oh. Kent. Huh. Then your mom again."

Jack isn't surprised that Kent called, and he knows Eric isn't really surprised, either. Since Jack and Kent buried the hatchet over a year ago, Eric hasn't hated Kent, but he was still fairly cool toward him until recently. When Jack told Kent about their plan, and Kent immediately offered to come out the day after their wedding to take the focus off of them, Eric warmed up to him considerably. None of them pretended it was an entirely altruistic offer on Kent's part; the truth was, as soon as Jack was out Kent would start getting questions, so it only made sense for him to do it as well, quickly. But he could have tried to talk Jack out of it entirely, or tried to cover his own ass in ways that didn't help Jack at all, and he didn't.

"Okay," Jack says, looking down at his half-drunk tea. "Okay, if Cassie or my parents call again, I'll answer. Not sure I'm ready to call anyone back yet. But I should keep a list."

"On it," Eric says, tapping away at his own phone, and Jack is pretty sure he's already got a list going in his Notes app.

One thing that Jack couldn't really have anticipated when they started dating was how good Eric is in crisis mode. Where Jack's brain either slows to molasses or else shorts out and throws up walls every time he tries to think—or both—Eric keeps himself together by becoming organized and efficient in a way that never would have seemed possible after seeing him struggle to stay on top of his assignments in college.

Jack first saw it when they got into a car accident the summer after his first season in Providence. A guy texting while driving ran a red light and hit them. The fact that they were in Jack's big truck meant that it was worse for the other guy, but Jack was shaken up enough that his brain had sort of shut down most useful function. An entirely different switch flipped in Eric's head, though; he managed to get the police and an ambulance on their way, contact both Jack's insurance and the other guy's insurance, corral a few witnesses to give statements to the police, and keep the other guy from trying to leave through sheer force of shame, all with only minimal input from Jack.

It made his choice of job even more ideal. Not only did he know every social media outlet top to bottom, but when there was a highly-publicized outbreak of food poisoning at one of the restaurants he'd basically saved their asses by convincing the higher-ups to use social media for transparency on how they were addressing the problem instead of trying to avoid any mention of it like they'd planned. They'd gotten ahead of the story and wound up being praised in the local media for their handling of the situation, which earned Eric a raise less than three months after being hired.

"Do you want me to read you your texts, give you a summary, or just tell you if anyone texted you who didn't call?"

Jack blinks at him. "Uh, just summarize them?"

"Okay, gimme a minute then, sweetheart." Jack watched as Eric's eyes flew back and forth, taking in god-knew-how-many texts in just a couple of minutes. "Obviously, everyone wants to make sure we're all right. Your dad came up with some creative ways to kill whoever's responsible and places to hide bodies. Oh my, so did Lardo. Don't let those two in a room together before the wedding, okay? Cassie's going email you a few possible press releases, but both she and George say we don't have to make a statement until we want to, if at all. Burke says to keep him posted, You Can Play can step up the timeline on the stuff they were planning. The SMH group chat is just… ridiculousness. A bunch of your teammates, pretty much all of them just saying how pissed they are on our behalf. Put Tater on the list to stay out of that theoretical room with your dad and Lardo. Or I dunno, maybe we should get 'em all together ASAP."

Jack finally laughs at that. Laughing feels weird.

"Kent says… uh, he says to call him because he has an idea. Well, that can't be good."

Jack blows out a hard breath through his nose, then takes his phone back. Without looking at anything else, none of the texts or anything, he hits Kent's name.

"Zimms! Holy shit, are you guys okay? That was so fucked up."

"We're… not really okay yet, no. We haven't really dealt with anything yet. I just—what do you mean, you have an idea? Don't even tell me—"

"C'mon, you know I was planning on coming out right after you did, anyhow. If yours got bumped up, why not me, too?"

"I wasn't given a choice in the matter, you don't have to fuck with your team's media right before playoffs."

"Oh, what _ever_. You know if we spread the shit around, the media'll lose interest faster. And anyhow, it's only a matter of time before they come sniffing. I'd rather deal with it now than have some reporter ambush me after a game."

"We don't even know what _we're_ going to do about this, okay, Kent? Don't jump the gun. Maybe I'll just deny everything."

Kent snorts. "No you won't, and you know it. But look, figure out what you're doing and let me know, okay? I'm still in St Louis, I can get on a plane to Providence at a moment's notice if you wanna do a joint press conference or something."

The thought of a press conference sends a chill down Jack's back, makes his stomach feel vaguely nauseous again. A roomful of flashing lights and vicious reporters.

"Just don't do _anything_ until we talk again, okay?"

"Fine, I promise. Say hi to your boy for me."

"Bye, Parse."

Jack hangs up and hands the phone back to Eric.

"So that was exactly what we assumed it was?" Eric asks as he takes the phone back. He's scrolling on his own phone.

"Yeah. I guess he's right, there's no point in him putting it off. It'll only cause bigger problems once playoffs start."

But Eric doesn't seem to be listening. He frowns intensely at his phone, bringing it closer to his face as he reads something.

"Oh, for—" He doesn't finish the sentence, just starts typing quickly. He makes a few disgusted noises in his throat as he taps around.

Jack reaches out and puts his hand on Eric's knee. Eric squeezes it with his own. Eventually he lets out a big sigh, then leans his head on Jack's shoulder.

Eric huffs out a breath that isn't quite a laugh, squeezing his eyes closed.

"What is it?" Jack's pretty sure he doesn't want to know, but needs to anyhow.

"I swear, I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Eric says, shaking his head. He opens his eyes and lifts his phone up to show Jack. "Okay, it looks like this started on BustedCoverage.com. Some 'anonymous source' of theirs 'speculates' that I could be a rent boy."

" _What?_ " Jack is vaguely aware that if his brain weren't already numb, he'd be enraged. "What the fuck?"

"Apparently they've found 'at least two' male escorts on rentmen.com who look enough like me that they're trying to contact them for a fucking comment." He shakes his head, looking disgusted. "Luckily, not many sites are picking up that angle, probably because they can smell the lawsuit brewin' if they get too close to falsely accusing you of hiring a prostitute without enough proof. The only one that really pisses me off is DeadSpin. They're not actually claiming it, they're just _pointing out_ that Busted is looking into it, even though they say, you know, they _doubt_ that's what's happening here. But just that they're giving that kind of rumor an audience. Even TMZ knows better'n _that_. I swear, it is not that hard to find me. You played hockey with a short blonde gay man for two years. I've said on my Twitter and on YouTube that I was moving to Providence and looking forward to hanging out with you more. Ugh, I was hoping we could get out ahead of this, but right now I'm ready to give an anonymous tip about myself to one of these sites just to clean up this stupid rumor."

"Okay," Jack says, and swallows down the last of his tea. "Obviously I can't afford to sit around coming to terms with this at my own speed. Lemme call Cassie."

He puts her on speakerphone so they can both talk.

"You guys, I am so, so sorry about this," she starts off.

"Nothing you could have done," Jack says, running a hand over his face.

"There's nothing you could have done, either, okay? I want to make that clear. You shouldn't have to live your entire lives without even opening your damn windows, especially not when you live on the tenth floor. Nobody in this organization blames either of you, you're the victims here, and however we spin this that will be completely clear. Have you had a chance to look at the press releases I sent?"

"Uh." Jack grimaces. "No. Sorry, I was going to look at those before calling you, but Bittle just found this shit about… Some sites are claiming he's a… a prostitute or something…"

"We are keeping a close eye on those, Jack, and believe me, the second any of them posts even one poorly-worded sentence they'll be hearing from our lawyers. Eric, I'm really, _really_ sorry you have to deal with that. If there were any way we could get them to take down all the speculation—"

"Oh, I know," Eric sighs, shaking his head. "Sending so much as one C&D if they haven't actually done anything illegal will only turn this whole show around against us. They'll say y'all're protesting too much."

"The best thing we can do," Cassie said, "is to get our version of events out there as quickly as we can. We've got to get _some_ kind of response out by the end of today, I think, even if it's just a boilerplate 'our athletes' personal lives are just that, and we hope you will respect Mr. Zimmermann's privacy.' Even that will show that the prostitution rumors have no merit, or else we'd be worrying more about them."

Eric presses his phone into Jack's free hand, and Jack sees that he's pulled up the sample press releases from email. There are four options, but as Jack flips through them, they all leave him cold.

"What options do we have besides a press release?"

"Well, we could do a press conference, of course."

Jack shakes his head. "Look, I liked the route we were going to take with this. I don't like letting them take that away from us. I refuse to let these assholes force me into doing this via a release or a press conference."

He looks over at Eric, who nods, then looks down at Jack's phone, his lips pursed in thought.

"Well, I'm sure just about any site, any journalist out there would jump at the chance to have an exclusive on this right now," Cassie says. "If you still want to go that route, I can get you a list of possibilities within an hour."

Jack opens his mouth to agree, but Eric beats him there. "Cassie? I have an idea. If we're gonna take back control of this narrative, I want to _really_ take control. I want this to be _our_ story, I don't want it to belong to some journalist who gets to cash in on today's hot topic."

Jack nods fervently, squeezing Eric's knee.

"I'm listening," Cassie says.

—

Five hours later, they get the final okay on their script from both the Falconers and the Aces PR teams. Although, it's less of a script and more of an outline. Jack knows he'll come off as horribly wooden if he reads from a script, but is likely to forget half the things he wants to say without one, so they've put together a list of bullet points similar to the ones Eric uses to do his vlogs. Eric has a teleprompter app they can use to display the points as they go, but neither of them will look like they're reading every word off a prompter.

Eric's camera is set up on the coffee table, arranged already at the right height to catch them both on the couch. Jack is a little nervous still, but much less so than he was even a couple of hours ago. Their friends and family all think they're taking the right approach. His dad is ready to retweet the link along with praise for his future son-in-law as soon as Eric uploads the video and tweets the link. Cassie is ready to retweet it to the Falconers account, and has a supportive press release ready to go out immediately afterward. Her counterpart at the Aces is similarly ready, as are the people at You Can Play.

They're all a little surprised that, given the amount of attention this has gotten today, only a few fans on Tumblr or Twitter have managed to connect Eric to the photos at all. None of the major sites have picked up on that speculation yet, and Jack will get a vicious thrill out of depriving them of that scoop.

Eric thinks that, barring some serious fuckups, it should only take about an hour to shoot and edit, and then they will all turn off their phones for the rest of the day.

Jack stands off to one side and watches as Eric gets the camera going and sits down on one side of the couch in front of it.

"Hey, y'all!" He smiles and waves to the camera just like he does at the start of his baking videos. "I know, y'all weren't expecting a new video from me for a couple more weeks, right? Well, you'll have to keep waiting for that cheesecake tutorial I promised, because this video is not actually about baking. I know, I am shocked, too! But today has been an absolutely _insane_ day for so many reasons, and the point of this video is to clear up a few things totally unrelated to baking.

"Now, I know most of my devoted followers aren't here for sports, but by now I know y'all know at least a little about hockey. And y'all know that after I graduated from Samwell, I moved to Providence, where my best friend, Jack Zimmermann, now plays for the Falconers. And some of y'all, even if you don't follow sports all that closely, _may_ have noticed that Jack was in the news today. Especially if you follow LGBT issues online, as the story's been covered—far more tastefully than in the sports news, I might add—by the Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, and the HuffPo's Queer Voices section.

"This whole thing started this morning, when TMZ posted some frighteningly invasive photographs of Jack in his own tenth floor bedroom, taken with a telephoto lens from a building probably about a half mile away. Now, there was nothin' nasty in these photos, but they did show him receiving a backrub from another man, and then kissing that man. A very attractive, short, blonde man. With a very nice haircut."

At this point, Eric tilts his head a little and levels a look at the camera that shows exactly how unimpressed he is with the entire thing.

From the other side of the room, Kent cracks up.

Eric rolls his eyes. "Parson, if you can't be quiet until it's time for you, you're gonna have to go wait in the bathroom or something."

"I'm sorry, but you've got that lookin' into the camera like you're on The Office thing down to a science, damn. TMZ is gonna look like such a bunch of idiots after this goes up."

"Why would you look at a camera if you're in an office?" Jack asks, mostly because it makes Eric laugh as hard as Kent did.

"I am onto you, Mr. Zimmermann, I _know_ you watched two seasons of The Office with Shitty. Anyhow, all y'all _hush_ so I can get through this."

He takes a moment to recompose his face and send a quick eyebrow-quirked glare at Kent, before starting over at "This whole thing started this morning."

"Jack has refrained from commenting so far today, as he's dealt with this disgusting invasion of his privacy at a time when he should be focusing on getting ready to start the playoffs next week. But we cannot simply let the speculation run rampant, so Jack is here to set the record straight, right here on YouTube."

Eric looks up at Jack and nods to the spot next to him on the couch, smiling softly. Jack takes a deep breath, and goes to sit next to him. He sits close enough that their legs are pressed together, and it calms him. Soon he'll be able to sit this close in public, and that thought gets him through what he has to do.

"So Jack," Eric says, "what do you have to tell my followers about these photos?"

Jack glances at the prompter to remind himself of the first few points he wanted to make, then looks directly into the camera.

"I'm sorry to disappoint everyone, because I know that so many people have spent so much effort today celebrating the fact that, after nine years, I finally managed to gift them with another scandal to spread across their front pages. But, sadly for them, the fact is that there is no scandal. Yes, there is a photo of me kissing a man, but that in and of itself is not scandalous." He grits his teeth for a second before continuing, still bitter that they've even put him in the position of having to say this. "The man in the photos is not some dirty little secret, and he most certainly is not some kind of _prostitute_ , as some less reputable websites have insinuated." He takes a deep breath and looks over at Eric, taking his hand. "His name is Eric Bittle, and he is my fiancé and the love of my life."

Jack can't help the goofy smile on his face by the end of that sentence. It feels unbelievably good to have said it, even if nobody will hear it for another hour. Eric is biting his lip, smiling up at Jack shyly, his cheeks bright pink. They hadn't exactly planned the "love of my life" part.

"Um." Eric has to pull his eyes away from Jack's and back to the camera, having uncharacteristically lost his place in the script for a second. "Right, uh. Those of you watching this who are actually my followers already know that Jack and I played hockey together for two years in college. All y'all who've never heard of me, but found this video once word got around what it contained—hi, I'm Eric, I played hockey with Jack for two years in college, most of that as linemates."

"We started dating the day I graduated from Samwell," Jack picked up the story, "nearly three years ago. A few months ago, he gave me the honor of agreeing to be my husband, and we're getting married this summer."

"We've kept our private life just that—private, out of the public eye, for obvious reasons," Eric continued. "But this isn't a secret. All our friends and family, including Jack's teammates on the Falconers, have known for a long time now and have been nothing but supportive."

"In fact," Jack says, and he finds himself clenching his jaw again, glaring at the camera. "We'd planned on announcing all of this publicly before our wedding this summer, but after the hockey season was over. So congratulations, TMZ, not only did you, I assume, pay good money for incredibly unethical and invasive photographs of someone's _bedroom_ , showing anyone who doubted it what lowlifes you really are, you did it to break a story that would have been public knowledge in two or three months anyhow. So congrats on that scoop, all you really managed was a lot of inconvenience for people who are trying to focus on preparing for playoffs that start in just a few days. Just like everything I did in the months you spent following me around hoping to catch me snorting cocaine, I'm guessing this turned out to be a lot more boring than you'd hoped.

"Although, it probably wasn't as boring as that time one of your guys waited outside my building and followed me all the way to the art house where I was going to watch a World War II documentary, then _camped outside the theater_ because he was convinced I was trying to shake him before going to see my dealer. Then when I came out after actually watching the whole movie and headed home, wouldn't leave until I started lecturing him on my senior history thesis topic. I'm assuming since photos of that night never made it onto your website, it must have been _even more boring_ than me kissing my fiancé."

"Oh, come on, now, Jack," Eric says, overly pleasant, and smacks him lightly on the thigh. "TMZ aren't the ones who called me a whore, after all."

"No, no, you're right, they didn't. Although they did refer to me as your sugar daddy, but they couldn't decide if this was more likely a kept man situation or if you were just a gold-digging twink taking advantage of me."

Eric's eyes widen comically. "That's right! They did say that, didn't they? Which makes it even more galling that I had to call in to work today so I could spend the whole damn day dealing with their bullshit."

"So, to recap," Jack says, looking neutrally into the camera again, "this is Eric. I've been in love with him for several years now. He lives here. Those photos were of his bedroom, too. We're getting married this summer. And just so you all know, the Falconers PR department have been keeping track of every single website and news outlet covering this story. I have a list of everyone who has published these photos of our bedroom, taken without our permission, and everyone who has insulted my fiancé. And none of those places will be getting any sort of interview with me, including post-game, for the foreseeable future. At least the rest of the season, possibly more. Now, obviously this was a big news story today, and I don't expect news outlets to not cover the news. But, amazingly, some people managed to report on the fact that I was outed in a very creepy and invasive way without actually publishing the photos or repeating completely unwarranted speculation as to the nature of our relationship."

"Now, a few housekeeping things," Eric says, settling into Jack's side. "Y'all may not realize this, but I know how the internet works. So I'm turning off comments for all my old videos until this blows over. The comments for this video will be _very_ heavily moderated. Not by me, by a good friend so I don't have to even see the nastiness. He does have one request, though: Please try to at least make your insults interesting?"

Eric picks up his phone to read some texts from Shitty out loud. "He says, and I quote, 'Look, if you have to be a homophobic assbag—'" Eric looks into the camera and mouths "assbag?" and Parse almost loses it again. "'—at least have the decency not to just keep throwing out the same tired old f-slur cliches and misogynistic comparisons of queer men to women. I'm taking time out of my highly-paid lawyering to put up with your bullshit for my buddies' sake, so make it worth my while.' He's right, though, y'know? I cannot even tell you how many times I have been called the same old names, so why even bother? If that's the best you can do, save our friend some time, and yourself some embarrassment."

"We've also anticipated a few other comments people might make, here or elsewhere on the internet," Jack takes over. "For example, there will surely be people out there who try to claim that Eric turned me gay. There are at least three things wrong with that statement and only one of them is the idea that you can 'turn' someone gay. For one thing, I'm not gay. I'm bisexual. And for those of you who don't think that's a real thing that exists…" Jack shrugs and grimaces, putting his hands up in confusion. "I'm sorry, I really just don't give a shit? That's nice that you don't think I'm attracted to women, go tell TMZ, maybe they'll care? The third problem is that, even if I _were_ gay and I _had_ been turned that way, Eric couldn't possibly have been responsible, because he's not even the first man I've been with."

"I'm just the cutest."

"Definitely."

"And the best at baking."

"Yes."

"And _arguably_ the most southern."

That wasn't in the script. Jack bites his lip, but can't keep it together, even as Kent saunters up behind the couch just like he's supposed to, leans over the back between them and says, "'Sup, guys?"

" _Arguably?_ " Jack bursts out laughing, looking at Eric like he has two heads. "You're _arguably_ more southern than Kent?"

"HA!" Kent shouts. He points at Jack, but he's getting in Eric's face. "Look! _I'm_ not the one who ruined your damn video this time, assbag!"

That makes even Eric break, so now they're all cracking up.

"Oh, look!" Eric chokes out his next line, not even trying to stop and go back and rerecord any of it. "It's Kent Parson! Captain of the Las Vegas Aces!"

They're officially all a fucking mess. None of them can look at either of the others without snorting or giggling even harder.

Finally, just as Jack thinks they're starting to calm down and will be able to start over, Kent stares right at the camera and shouts "I'M GAY!" and they all lose it again. Jack can't even remember how the script was supposed to go at this point, but given that at 9AM today he didn't think he'd have this much fun again until they got out of the country after the wedding, he's okay with that.

"He is!" Jack manages, just before doubling over with his head in his hands.

"It's true! He's as gay as me!" Jack feels Eric collapse onto his back, gasping for breath.

"So ha, TMZ, you think you're so cool, but I've been screwin' guys all over Vegas for _years_ now and _this guy's_ fucking _vlog_ about _baking_ fucking scooped you on it." Kent manages to work up a head of steam while Eric and Jack completely fail to pull their shit together. "And Zimms and I were sleeping together for like two years! You and all the other pieces of shit paparazzi out there were too busy trying to turn Xanax into coke to even notice the real story!"

"Really, guys," Eric says to the camera, hardly laughing almost barely at all. "There was fanfic of it and everything. Oh! Jack! Jack! Did I ever tell you about that really cute coffee shop AU I found—"

"Bittle, stop!" Jack gets his hands on Eric's shoulders. "Stop talking. Please, for the love of god, do not tell me this."

"You hear that?" Parse is yelling gleefully at the camera again. "Fuckin' fourteen-year-olds on LiveJournal knew what was up! And, like, not even Oh No They Didn't. The _dorky_ parts of LiveJournal!"

"Okay!" Eric waves his hands around like he's actually going to succeed in calming anyone down. "What have we learned today? Jack Zimmermann, bisexual, gonna marry me. Me, guy in the photos, gay, gonna marry Jack. Kent Parson, gay, not gonna marry anyone anytime soon as far as I know but definitely involved with Jack when they were teenagers. Y'all got it? Awesome, I'll teach y'all how to make cheesecake that don't crack next time."

"Can I have pie now?" Kent asks, suddenly serious. "I was told there would be pie if I showed up for this thing."

"There you have it, folks," Jack says, managing to get his Media Face back on. "Kent Parson—so easy he'll fly halfway across the country _and_ out himself if you offer him a slice of pie."

"Excuse you, _I'm_ easy? I'm not the one you allegedly found on rentmen.com."

"Oh my god, how do I get this camera turned off already?" Eric manages to knock it over before finally succeeding.

In the final cut, the video switches to credits after "Can I have pie now?" although the rest keeps playing as audio over the credits. Jack and Kent are credited as themselves, while Eric gets credited as himself, "Guy in Photos with Jack," "Vlogger," and "Pie." TMZ is credited as "bunch of assbags" and BustedCoverage as "bigger bunch of assbags, if that's possible." Then George, Cassie, their counterparts in the Aces organization, and "the entirety of Samwell Men's Hockey, past, present, and future" are thanked under acknowledgements.

The bit that was cut out when Kent started laughing earlier gets tacked on after the credits as an outtake, but other than that Eric doesn't edit it at all.

It's not even close to what they wanted, but in some ways, maybe it's better. Jack still wishes he could run off to Halifax and get married as soon as it goes up, then head to Paris for two weeks. Instead he'll have to go to practice the next day and get his head back in the game for playoffs. He knows there's a good chance he'll attract extra shit during the upcoming games, but that's not because of the video.

The video is not just them wresting control of the narrative back from the vultures. It's an entirely new narrative that cuts the vultures out of the loop entirely while making them look like fools. It's their new story, the story of That One Time We Flew Kent Out From St Louis To Make A Vlog Where We Dissed TMZ and Laughed a Lot. It's the only story anyone will care about.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr.](http://porcupine-girl.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Overwhelm Them With Honesty [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14373345) by [PorcupineGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcupineGirl/pseuds/PorcupineGirl), [read by Khashana (Khashana)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khashana/pseuds/read%20by%20Khashana)




End file.
